Chapter 58: Self-entrapment and hand-pulled trap

It is true that the old wild shrike has a bad temper, but this guy also has a weakness: it is very afraid of water.

Yue Feng held the pole used to tie the shrike and placed it over the water basin. The shrike, which had been struggling frantically to “hang itself” a second ago, suddenly became obedient.

Either you fall into the basin and get soaked, or you stand on the pole obediently. It’s an easy choice.

After the shrike stood firmly on the pole, Yue Feng moved the water basin away. Gradually, the shrike got used to moving on the pole and was not so afraid of people anymore.

After all, the size of the tiger is much smaller than that of a bird of prey. In less than a morning, Yue Feng had already tied it up. During the day, there were people at home coming in and out, and the tiger quickly adapted to the presence of people around him. After a few failed struggles, he slowly accepted his fate.

Near noon, Yue Feng took out some lean meat from the warehouse and dipped it in water to feed Hubula. Hubula, who had been hungry all morning, took a tentative bite and soon started to eat with relish.

After filling its stomach, the tiger stood on a pole, trimmed its fur, and stretched its arms. It has already adapted to its new life.

If you watch birds like this in the afternoon or evening, and then try your luck in a crowd, it will basically be useful.

While Yue Feng was fiddling with the tiger net during the day, his father Yue Lei was not idle either. His son had to prepare five sets of nets for this trip up the mountain, and they all needed him, as the logistics director, to be responsible for making them.

Fortunately, there are only a few knots on one side of the five-finger-wide eagle net, so the net can be woven very quickly.

Yue Lei spent a whole day plus some overtime at night to complete all the mesh panels.

Now we have the birds and the net, all we need is the bait.

To catch young eagles, baits such as sparrows are sufficient, but if you want to catch large eagles, the best bait is a pigeon with a small raindrop pattern.

The Qian family in the village raised pigeons. Yue Feng went to their house after dark with money and bought ten pigeons at a high price of one yuan per pigeon.

The pigeons all slept in their nests at night, and ten pigeons arrived quickly. After Yue Feng paid the money, he carried the pigeons back home.

The next morning, Yue Feng took some food and water into his bag, carried his sword and went up the mountain.

This time, the hill that Yue Feng went to was not the hill where he usually released hawks and caught chickens and greyhounds.

If you want to hunt big eagles, the best falconry site around is Hutouling, which is an hour and a half away from Xing’an Village. The terrain on that hill is relatively steep, and its altitude is more than 100 meters higher than other hills around it. It is considered a commanding height on the surrounding ridges.

In the fall, the falconry season, birds of prey save energy by taking advantage of rising air currents.

The mountain at Hutouling faces southeast. Whether the wind is blowing from the southwest or the northeast, it is a good place to catch eagles. Yue Feng caught many eagles here in his previous life.

One year, during the peak days of eagle hunting, Yue Feng had a glorious record of shooting down four large eagles in one day. On average, every year, as long as the time is right and the wind direction is right, it is not a problem to catch one or half a large eagle.

What’s more, it is still 1980 and the raptor resources are much more abundant than in the previous life. When Yue Feng agreed to Niu Fusheng, he had already evaluated these factors in his heart.

Today Yue Feng went up the mountain, and his main job was to open up the area.

The so-called clearing of a site means bringing tools for chopping wood and tidying up the selected site for setting the net.

There are not many large ancient trees on Hutou Mountain, mostly small pine trees and shrubs.

After leaving home, Yue Feng ran all the way towards Hutou Mountain. After walking for an hour and a half, he arrived at the mountain he remembered from his previous life.

Select the area for setting the net, level the weeds and shrubs on the ground, and then select thin wooden sticks two fingers thick and bury them in the ground in a square shape. These areas are where the nets are set up, and they only need to be inspected three times a day, morning, noon and evening, and do not need to be watched all the time.

The so-called self-falling net is actually an improved and upgraded version of the riding cage net. Four sticks are buried in the ground to form a square, and then four pieces of mesh are hung on two adjacent sticks to form an airtight cube. The upper end of the mesh is fixed with a slipknot and tied at the bottom. A pigeon is tied in the middle of the four nets as bait.

When a hawk flies overhead and spots a trap, it will swoop down to attack the pigeon, which will be caught in the trap and unable to move.

The advantage of this kind of net is that it does not require people to watch it all the time, but it also has disadvantages. It is said that eagles that have suffered losses in the past and gained experience can see through the traps set by humans. After discovering the bait, they will only circle around and observe, and will not launch an attack.

This type of self-falling net can catch large eagles, but its success rate is much lower than that of the second type of net.

The second type of net for catching large eagles is called a dragnet.

A falconer will use bamboo poles or thin wood as a frame to make a single-sided pull net, which will be raised at a small angle or directly attached to the ground. A pigeon will be tied to the center area under the net.

When the sparrows in the shack spot an eagle flying in the sky, they will show some special fearful movements in reaction, and then the eagle handler will grab the rope of the net tightly.

When the bird of prey locked onto the pigeon in the middle of the net in mid-air and swooped down to attack, the eagle handler quickly pulled the net and trapped the eagle in the net.

In fact, of these two methods of catching big eagles, you only need to prepare one of them. After all, birds of prey are not easy to come by. Even on the days when there are the most eagles flying around, their overall number is still in the minority.

But in order to shorten the time spent on catching the eagle, Yue Feng adopted a two-pronged approach.

In one day, Yue Feng cleaned up five places, four small and one large.

By the time Yue Feng was setting up the field for pulling the nets and setting up the shed for hunting hawks, it was already 4:30 in the afternoon.

The next morning, Yue Feng carried the decoy on his back, took an eagle net and other tools, and headed straight for Hutou Mountain.

At this moment, it is the Cold Dew solar term. The cold air is gradually moving southward, and the north wind shows signs of gradually rising.

For several days in a row, although the weather was clear and cool in autumn, the temperature in the morning and evening had dropped to single digits.

Why do we need to write about the solar terms and wind direction? Because these things directly affect the harvest from falconry hunting in the mountains.

When Yue Feng was on his way in the morning, he would look up at the sky from time to time. Occasionally, he would catch a glimpse of the traces of birds of prey, which would give Yue Feng more confidence.

Arriving at Hutou Mountain, Yue Feng first set up the traps in various places, and then brought his belongings to the last place to pull the nets.

After hanging up the net, tying the rope, hammering in the stakes and tying the lures, Yue Feng completed the initial preparations.

He simply scratched a circle on the ground with a few pine branches, and then took the bird into the shack.

The man entered the shack and inserted the pole with the bird watching device at the entrance of the shack. Then he dug a shallow pit with a diameter of about seven or eight centimeters and a depth of twenty centimeters in the area under the pole. Everything was ready except for the east wind.

There seems to be no recommendation for new books in the library, and the smart push time is not accurate for the second round, which causes my second round data to be at a disadvantage.

Currently the backend data is declining seriously. Is there any big brother who hasn’t voted for me? Please cast a few more votes for my child. Please!


(End of this chapter)